“Approaches near perfection…This is an excellent introduction to infectious diseases by a group of authors who take a straightforward and bullet-point approach to thinking and talking about clinical issues…”―Doody’s Reviews

Updated second edition of the concise but comprehensive handbook of clinical infectious disease for students, residents, primary care medical providers, nurses, and PAs. Written in outline format with short, focused chapters, the book presents a systematic method for understanding basic mechanisms, establishing a diagnosis, and implementing appropriate treatment for commonly encountered problems.

Essentials of Clinical Infectious Diseases, Second Edition begins with a general framework covering clinical reasoning, antimicrobial agents and microbiology, and antimicrobial stewardship. Individual chapters devoted to the broad range of infectious diseases are organized by body system and feature targeted presentation of pathogenesis and risk factors, microbial causes, clinical manifestations, patient work-up, diagnostic criteria, and medical, antimicrobial, and surgical management. The book also addresses important related topics including fever and neutropenia, approach to evaluating ectoparasite-related infections, sepsis and travel medicine, infection control, and hospital epidemiology. Designed for busy practitioners at any level looking to sharpen the clinical problem-solving skills required to provide the highest quality care to patients with infectious diseases.

Key Features:

Presents core clinical infectious disease topics in concise easy-to-read format
Revised and updated to reflect recent developments in the field consistent with evidence-based literature and current clinical practice guidelines
Six new chapters on Lyme disease, anorectal infections, travel medicine, dental infections, antimicrobial stewardship, and clinical reasoning and statistics
Focus on the approach to evaluation and management of the patient
Incorporates essential antimicrobial therapy information with adult, pediatric, and OB-GYN dosing considerations

Infectious, or communicable, diseases are a major global health concern. Managing and preventing the spread of diseases takes a concerted public health effort to deal with deadly outbreaks, epidemics and pandemics. This book reveals the global trends and challenges in the fight against the major types of infectious disease, and looks at vaccine-preventable diseases and immunisation in Australia. Are we doing enough to win the ongoing fight against infectious diseases? Also includes: worksheets and activities, fast facts, glossary, web links, index

Infectious Diseases, MicrobiologyComments Off on Updates on Clostridium difficile in Europe: Advances in Microbiology, Infectious Diseases and Public Health Volume 8

Mar252018

This book outlines the currently available clinical, epidemiological and experimental data on Clostridium difficile infection (CDI) with special emphasis on studies and results achieved in Europe.
The incidence and severity of CDI has increased significantly over the last decade, and the book explains why C. difficile, recently reclassified as Clostridioides difficile, remains a significant challenge, also from economic perspective, to health care systems all over the world. The different reservoirs of this ubiquitous microorganism are reviewed as well as the different factors contributing to its virulence, such as toxins and biofilm formation. The rapid evolution of antibiotic resistance is clearly a concern and in a specific way can influence the CDI epidemiology. Additionally, new emerging strains and comparative genomics studies are discussed for their relevance from epidemiological and evolutionary point of view.

The book also gives an overview on diagnostics, therapy and surveillance, all of which are still challenging. Therefore, a closer look is taken on the effect of probiotics as an alternative to antibiotics, for prevention and treatment of CDI. Fecal transplantation from healthy donors, passive immunotherapies and vaccines for patients with recurrences are also discussed in dedicated chapters.

The book closes with a summary of the history and the achievements of the European Society of Clinical Microbiology and Infectious Diseases Study Group for Clostridium difficile (ESGCD) written by the current and past presidents of the Society. It is the aim of this book to raise awareness on CDI and to disseminate updated information on its prevention, diagnosis and treatment.

The vector-borne Zika virus joins avian influenza, Ebola, and yellow fever as recent public health crises threatening pandemicity.
By a combination of stochastic modeling and economic geography, this book proposes two key causes together explain the explosive spread of the worst of the vector-borne outbreaks.

Ecosystems in which such pathogens are largely controlled by environmental stochasticity are being drastically streamlined by both agribusiness-led deforestation and deficits in public health and environmental sanitation.

Consequently, a subset of infections that once burned out relatively quickly in local forests are now propagating across susceptible human populations whose vulnerability to infection is often exacerbated in structurally adjusted cities. The resulting outbreaks are characterized by greater global extent, duration, and momentum.
As infectious diseases in an age of nation states and global health programs cannot, as much of the present modeling literature presumes, be described by interacting populations of host, vector, and pathogen alone, a series of control theory models is also introduced here. These models, useful to researchers and health officials alike, explicitly address interactions between government ministries and the pathogens they aim to control.

Ever since we started huddling together in communities, the story of human history has been inextricably entwined with the story of microbes. They have evolved and spread amongst us, shaping our culture through infection, disease, and pandemic. At the same time, our changing human culture has itself influenced the evolutionary path of microbes. Dorothy H. Crawford here shows that one cannot be truly understood without the other.

Beginning with a dramatic account of the SARS pandemic at the start of the 21st century, she takes us back in time to follow the interlinked history of microbes and man, taking an up-to-date look at ancient plagues and epidemics, and identifying key changes in the way humans have lived – such as our move from hunter-gatherer to farmer to city-dweller – which made us vulnerable to microbe attack.

Showing how we live our lives today – with increasing crowding and air travel – puts us once again at risk, Crawford asks whether we might ever conquer microbes completely, or whether we need to take a more microbe-centric view of the world. Among the possible answers, one thing becomes clear: that for generations to come, our deadly companions will continue to shape human history.

Oxford Landmark Science books are ‘must-read’ classics of modern science writing which have crystallized big ideas, and shaped the way we think.

This book covers all aspects of Neglected Tropical Diseases in the region of South Asia. NTDs constitute a significant part of the total disease burden in this geographic area, including soil borne helminth infections, vector borne viral infections, protozoan infections and a few bacterial infections. The current volume covers the most common neglected viral, bacterial and protozoan infections. On top of that, the last part of the volume is dedicated to the management of neglected tropical diseases.

There are many principles and applications of recombinant antibodies for infectious diseases. The preferred technology associated to recombinant antibody generation is mainly phage display. The adaptation of antibodies for infectious diseases is an area lacking information as most literature is focused on oncology or autoimmunity. This project highlights the power and potential of antibody phage display for infectious diseases. In addition to that, supplementary information regarding technologies associated to antibody generation and engineering in the context of infectious disease will also help to provide greater insight to the potential of recombinant antibodies for infectious diseases.

Infectious DiseasesComments Off on Allergy Prevention and Exacerbation: The Paradox of Microbial Impact on the Immune System

Mar202018

Allergy is developing into one of the most prevalent diseases affecting individuals in the very early days of life. While the cause of this epidemic is still unclear, it appears that the westernized life style is playing an important role, which includes nutrition, possibly air pollution as well as hygienic conditions. While epidemiologic studies were able to narrow down these factors, basic research discovered novel mechanisms that control the organism´s tolerance against allergens. Particularly interesting is the role of microorganisms that colonize or infect a host and thereby cause damage and immunological activation followed by sensitization or exacerbation of already existing sensitizations. However at the same time microbial activation of the immune system can help to generate a protective immunity that prevents allergen sensitization. The current book is collecting these evidences and connects epidemiologic and clinical mechanistic knowledge. Only the synthesis of this knowledge will help to find solutions to the ongoing allergy epidemic in terms of public health activities, prevention and therapy.

This book presents the history of HIV/AIDS in China, which over the last three decades has been a gripping tale of exclusion and fear, and then, by turns, of involuntary tragedy, cautious experimentation and finally vigorous response.
It discusses the occurrence, development and epidemic studies and also introduces China’s policies and measures to conquer this epidemic, offering readers valuable insights into China’s approach to prevention in this field.

The 4th edition of Drug Interactions in Infectious Diseases is being split into two separate volumes – “Mechanisms and Models of Drug Interactions” and “Antimicrobial Drug Interactions”.
This volume, “Mechanisms and Models of Drug Interactions,” delivers a text that enhances clinical knowledge of the complex mechanisms, risks, and consequences of drug interactions associated with antimicrobials, infection, and inflammation. The book provides a comprehensive review of basic clinical pharmacology with a focus on metabolism and transporter-mediated drug interactions. The chapters address materials that cannot be retrieved easily in the medical literature, including materials focused on the complex interrelationship of acute infection, inflammation, and the risk of drug interactions in the Drug-Cytokine chapter. The Food-Drug and Herb-Drug interactions chapters remain definitive resources. A new chapter on in vitro modeling of drug interactions is included along with updates on design and data analysis of clinical drug interaction studies. Authoritative discussion of models for regulatory decision-making on drug-drug interactions provides the necessary framework to aid antimicrobial drug development. This concise review of the mechanisms and models of drug interactions provides important insights to health care practitioners as well as scientists in drug development.